Some Views on Writing Classes at WSJO Szczecin by Mario Cordina

Some Views on Writing Classes at WSJO Szczecin

Mario Cordina

It is a fact that some students tackle language like math, a system of grammatical rules and written laws with a spattering of idiioms, hand picked and learnt by heart for Use of English lessons. It naturally follows that such students produce stilted, unimaginative writing and if an essay title is given which involves skills beyond their limited vocabulary and idiomatic range, then they feel loest and out of their depth.

They should approach language in a more natural way and start to look forward to making their target language their own. This can only be achieved by opening up to the culture behind the language. Students must aspire to be as close to native speakers and writer as possible.

One frequent comment is that unfortunately students do not have the possibility to physically be in the country and experience the customs and geography of the language they want to master. Actually this is no excuse, primarily because life is unfair and students with the means to go abroad mix and compete with those who cannot afford such means. Both are assessed on the same grounds. Furthermore there is no reason why students cannot assimilate a given language by staying at home.

The key lies in reading material which is of interest and comes from all walks of life and topics. The wider the range of topics, the wider the range of vocabulary and their grasp of an idion’s or word’s meaning in a different context. T.V. with its news, documentaries, adverts, humour, jokes, action films containing a lot of everyday vernacular language, slang and jargon, apart from the more formal language forms also presents us with a fast way of opening an unexpected number of new doors and windows onto the target language. Students seem to be only too happy to wander around the internet online looking for specific material, however it is the element of surprise, the fact that you do not know what’s coming up next in films and books that is closer to real life situations. Yet all the possible media available to us offer us with an unlimited exposure time to the language and are vital towards achieving natural and simple language fluency.

There are three steps to learing a language. The first one is to understand it, the second one is to use it by giving answers and asking questions and the third is to manipulate it, to be able to twist the language around your finger, to create puns the way that Shakespeare did and ramble off in a Dickens lenghty manner or to be as witty as any Woody Allen text. In practice this means, a step from trying to write a correct error free text to an interesting flowing passage which could be included in a long essay or international journal. A passage which breathes and lives and which is the essence of the writer that penned it and not a mere shy shadow that does no justice to its author.

Personally I have learnt Polish, well not properly, for I have never attended any lessons. My knowledge of teh language is much better than my French, which I learnt at school for an 8 year period. My written French is much better than my written Polish, which I must admit, I keep for my eyes only. On the other hand, however I find myself grappling with the infinite meanings and collocations of Polish words and phrases. It fascinates me and I find myself trying to find ways of remembering new words. I use no dictionary, no translations, no textbook. Test me. It works. I am sure that if I turned my hands to writing in Polish by sitting for Polish Grammar lessons and literature lectures, I would make the grade. Already although my writing in Polish is fraught with errors it sounds Polish. And this is the point. Grammatical skills aside, whether one is a native speaker of the language or not a degree of crediting one’s knowledge should be a testament to the graduate’s sounding right.

It follows, therefore that I find myself concentrating more on errors that if corrected will make a student sound more English / American. For example, native writers make mistakes with prepositions, verb conjugations etc. They never, never omit the ‘the’ or any article for that matter. They never get a sentence construction muddled up either. My first lesson always starts with a funny sentence like this:

“The sexy girl loves the sexy boy.”

There are 6 positions in this sentence. Position number 1 and 4 are articles and they are compulsory. Even in a phrase, “The girl loves,’ there is an article present too. In class I normally go into more grammatical detail, honing in on the use of adverbials, prepositional phrases, sentence structure and so on. I will not tarry longer on this particular subject here, except to say that this was the first thing that struck me in Poland. That is the fact that students were unaware of the fact that they were writing or speaking in English without using articles. It was not a mere slip of the tongue. It was a huge misunderstanding.

I was trained never to use first language during classes, an EFL long term dispute, but it is here that my knowledge of the Polish tongue comes to my rescue. There are no articles in Polish. Does this mean that my students are translating from Polish to English and thus ommitting articles? It definitely means that they are not thinking in English. There is a big different between ‘a girl,’ or ‘the girl,’ in my life.

There are other implications. One of the main differences between Polish and English is the determining factor. The English language probably because of its history and people needs to determine everything, which person, what time, which place etc. This is probably why we use the preposition ‘at’ in English, a preposition that is non-existant in Polish. The same goes for ‘by,’ which baffles Polish students who have a hard time understanding the difference between ‘next to,’ ‘near,’ ‘close,’ and ‘by’. Polish expressions do not fuss around ownership or time. ‘Car is outside,’ and not ‘The (my) car is outside.’ Consider the term ‘Jutro o 9’ which could translate into ‘Tomorrow around 9,” compared to ‘Tomorrow at 9 am.sharp!’ The ‘o’ in Polish gives one the feeling that a few minutes before or after 9 would be okay, just like the Spanish Manana is an abstract tomorrow when in English we would use ‘We’re meeting tomorrow,’ a continous tense that is also to determine exact time and place. I believe that language betrays the very people that speak it (a generally more relaxed attitude to time and deadlines compared to a community where there is a stricter attitude)  and this is what makes languages interesting and challenging.

It is said that people who are able to think in more than one language are more intelligent than others who do not. I have no idea about my IQ yet I do feel confident about expressing myself and tend to switch from language to language when I feel that a certain expression is better than that of my own. It makes me feel more open, more at ease to say exactly what I want to say and in the long run, languages are fun, once you can manipulate them.

To end on a positive note, although a language to express oneself may look like a grissly task for a beginner, languages have been made by man for man, a tool to help and not hinder communication.

I believe that it is the co-ordinator’s task to provide the students with the appropriate tools. Students must understand that all courses offered are part of the whole : UK and US life / culture courses, literature, linguistics, methodology etc are as much a part of the practical exam as Use of English, reading, writing, listening, speaking and translation. Finally, it is my job to provide the students with the motivation to read more, write more and pursue new challenges. When I look back to my days as a university student, it is with longing and nostalgia. I would love my students to say the same.